Request for help from hyperlocals

I’m on secondment with Big Lottery Fund’s West Midlands team at the moment, helping them with their BIG Local work. If you know of any hyperlocal blogs or social media surgeries serving the following areas, please could you leave me a comment below, tweet to @thewmro or email me oliver.nicholls [at] wmro.org

• Bromford & Firs Estate (Birmingham)
• East Coseley (Dudley)
• Horsefair, Broadwaters, Greenhill (Kidderminster)
• Tividale  – Grace Mary to Lion Farm (Sandwell)
• Gobowen, St. Martins, Chell Heath (Shropshire)
• Chell Heath & Fegg Hays (Stoke on Trent)

Thank you

West Midlands particularly vulnerable to public sector job cuts

Public sector employment has grown significantly in recent years across the UK and has been the key driver of the economy’s expansion. But proposals announced by the government to make £83bn worth of cuts in public sector spending are forecast to lead to the loss of up to 600,000 public sector jobs across the UK over the next 6 years, according to a study¹ by Oxford Economics.

The West Midlands economy is particularly vulnerable to the impact of the cuts. Between 1998 and 2008 (latest available figures), the West Midlands saw the most significant increase in dependence on public sector employment in the country².

The share of jobs accounted for by the public sector increased from 22% in 1998 to 27% in 2008, a rise of 5 percentage points, bringing total public sector employment to some 637,000.

We forecast that between 2010 and 2016 there will be a net loss of nearly 50,000 jobs across the West Midlands and, based on the ratio of the number of private sector jobs dependent on public sector spending and the associated supply chain nationally, a further 310,000 jobs are at risk at private sector firms directly or indirectly reliant on public sector spending³.

Local enterprise partnership proposals announced

56 proposals for local enterprise partnerships across the country have been submitted, the government has confirmed, following the closing day for submissions.

There are seven proposals from the West Midlands:

• Birmingham and Solihull with East Staffordshire, Lichfield and Tamworth: two page summary (pdf, 17kb) and  the full proposal (doc, 243kb)
• Coventry and Warwickshire (doc, 3.5mb)
• Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire (pdf, 1.3mb)
• The Black Country (pdf, 2.74mb)
• The Marches Enterprise Partnership (pdf, 1mb) – Herefordshire, Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin
• West Midlands (an overarching proposal from Business Voice West Midlands)
• Worcestershire (pdf, 603kb)

Three distinct responses in respect to cross boundary working arrangements have also been received from Peak District, South East England and West Leicestershire and Northern Warwickshire.

Here’s the full list of proposals.

Inward investment into the West Midlands 2009/10 – a local analysis

In 2009/10 there were 84 inward investment successes in the West Midlands and another four knowledge-based investments. These investments created over 1,500 new jobs and safeguarded another 4,300.

Although these 88 investments represented the lowest number of jobs created or safeguarded since 1992/93, they also represented the 7th highest total number of projects since 1991.

Inward investment is usually spread reasonably evenly between the West Midlands metropolitan areas and the shire counties. In 2009/10 the shire counties attracted the majority of inward investment projects (55%). See left.

However, the metropolitan areas of Birmingham, Coventry, Solihull, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton have attracted perhaps just over half of the projects over the years – see below. The number of jobs created and safeguarded also generally follows a similar pattern.

Shropshire to host Centre of Excellence for mental health and employment

Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health have announced nine new Centres of Excellence in supporting people who use mental health services into employment, including one in Shropshire.

Services in Central and North West London, Essex, Shropshire, Somerset and South West London have committed to being full partners in the programme. They will act as exemplars of how Individual Placement and Support (IPS) can be implemented in local areas across England. A further four areas have been invited as ‘emerging centres’.

Inward investment: record high for West Midlands

In the period 2008 to 2009 the West Midlands region received 117 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, a record high since records began in 1991 (shown by the blue line in the graph below).

Shropshire electoral review using ArcGIS

What are electoral reviews and why do one?

Electoral reviews are undertaken periodically and their main aim is to ensure that ‘electoral equality’ is maintained, meaning that all councillors in a single authority represent approximately the same number of electors.

Reviews are needed if there has been a lot of new development in an area which results in an increase in the numbers of electors or (as in the case of Shropshire) if a new authority is formed which has a different number of councillors, to ensure there are fair arrangements in place for the first elections to the new authority.

Latest gross disposable household income estimates indicate metropolitan West Midlands is UK’s poorest sub-region

The 2007 Regional Gross Disposable Household Income (GDHI) (Word, 411KB) estimates are released today by the Office for National Statistics.

Indexed GDHI per head (where UK=100) for the West Midlands in 2007 was 90, stable in comparison to the revised 2006 index value of 90.

GDHI per head in the West Midlands rose from £12,700 in 2006 to £12,900 in 2007, an increase of 1.9%, in line with the increase seen in England and the UK.

Gross Disposable Household Income (GDHI) per head is preferred to Gross Value Added (GVA) per head as a measure of economic welfare.

West Midlands rural areas hit particularly hard by recession

The Observatory’s Skills Team are working on an assessment of skills and labour market issues in the rural areas of the West Midlands on behalf of the Regional Skills Partnership and the Rural Affairs Forum.

While we expect to publish in April 2009, we can report now on emerging findings relating to the impact of the recession.

Rural areas of the West Midlands have out-performed the rest of the region in recent years in terms of business growth, new business formation and employment growth.

However, there remains a significant dependence on lower value added sectors and industries such as agriculture, manufacturing industries such as food and drink, construction, hotels and catering, and transport.

West Midlands local development annual monitoring reports

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires local planning authorities to regularly monitor planning policies that affect the planning and development of their areas.

Each council is required to produce an Annual Monitoring Report which is published in December to assess the effectiveness of policy in the Local Development Framework.

These show whether the progress towards targets and milestones in the Local Development Framework are being met and whether council planning policies are being successfully implemented. If policies are not working as intended – or are not achieving sustainable objectives – the Annual Monitoring Report includes suggested actions.

Questionnaire on benefits of local information systems

This questionnaire is part of a research project, commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government, to investigate the way users of local information systems benefit from the data and statistics the systems provide. The aim of the questionnaire is to obtain information about how you use the system and the way it helps you.

West Midlands Regional Integrated Economic Assessment published

The West Midlands is the first English region to produce a Regional Integrated Economic Assessment. The aim of the project is to provide an assessment of the performance of the West Midlands’ economy and of the factors which contribute to it. It also assesses the relative position of the different parts of the region.

The Assessment is made up of:

• An overarching regional summary (PDF, 1.7MB)
• Three thematic chapters:
  • Economic Structure and Output (PDF, 1.7MB)
  • Communities and Connections (PDF, 1.5MB)
  • The People of the Region (PDF, 0.6MB)
• Local authority area profiles for each of the 14 strategic authorities

Local Area Agreements: The next generation

In June 2008, 150 new Local Area Agreements (LAA) were signed off by central government. A Local Area Agreement is a three year agreement, based on local Sustainable Community Strategies, that sets out the priorities for a local area.

The 14 strategic authorities in the West Midlands each have a Local Area Agreement.

Mapping waste in the food industry

New research jointly published by DEFRA and the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), Mapping waste in the food industry, assesses the amount of waste produced in the food industry.

The research, which was carried out by Oakdene Hollins, assessed member sites of the FDF with Shropshire sites producing the greatest quantity of food waste in 2006 (100,780 tonnes), which accounted for over 15% of the UK total.

Shropshire also had the highest volume of waste sent to landfill in the region according to the report at 5,827 tonnes although Scotland and Lincolnshire were considerably larger at over 13,000 tonnes each.

Life expectancy in the West Midlands

A recent press release [no longer available online] from trade union GMB highlights the difference in life expectancy at birth across the West Midlands.

Women living in Solihull have the highest life expectancy in the region at 83.3 years with those living in Stoke-on-Trent having the lowest at 79.6.

For men, the difference is greater with those living in South Shropshire expected to live on average to 79.4 years of age, the longest in the West Midlands region. However those living in Sandwell have the lowest life expectancy – a full five years lower.